The Altruism Effect: Book One (Mastermind Murderers Series 1) Read online

  She turned toward him and stared into his face. His eyes were sunken and darted around the small room. He showed all possible signs of an anxiety attack. She felt a deep sense of empathy towards him, and nearly forgot about the situation she was in. She reached up and put her hand on his arm to comfort him, though she couldn’t fathom exactly why.

  “Listen. I’m sharing this with you because I feel like you are our only chance of possibly escaping. I’ve been watching since you got here. You aren’t like the others. You might have a chance.”

  He spoke so fast she found it hard to keep up. OUR only chance of possibly escaping? Not just mine? “Breathe. In and out. Long deep breaths for me, okay?” She worked him through it. “Tell me again. What’s going on? Who’s always watching?”

  “We call him the Warden. I’ve never seen him. I just follow orders.”

  She tried to absorb the information without reaction. She’d get overwhelmed and lose control if she allowed herself to react.

  He spoke again, “Look at me. You’re the one locked up and you’re sitting here comforting me.”

  She closed her eyes a moment. She couldn’t help it. “It’s just my nature.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re here. Listen. We don’t have much time so I have to explain this quickly, okay? You need to keep up.”

  She nodded, waiting for the worst.

  “One minute I was fishing off the dock, the next, I’m in a room with a massive headache. I’m thrown this guard uniform and told that I have to play the role of the guard.”

  “Wait—” It sounded all too familiar. She too, was in her normal life, doing things she’d normally do. Then she woke up here. There was evidence she’d been drugged. But what was she doing before she got here? This guard remembered he was fishing before he was taken. Why couldn’t she remember exactly what had happened to her? She’d thought she was in some sort of state facility at first. And it enraged her even more that the head of this operation manipulated her into thinking she was a murderer. That everyone around her was a murderer.

  “No, listen. We aren’t given any rules on how to do this. But here’s the thing. I can’t leave. I’m being held here against my will.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “I have no choice. I’ve got—” He choked up. “I’ve got a baby girl at home. She just celebrated her fourth birthday. And a wife. I want out. I’m a prisoner here just as much as you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “But you wear that uniform. Not this one.”

  “If I don’t perform the duties I think a guard is supposed to perform, my family is in danger. And that, to me, is me doing exactly what I need to survive and keep my family safe. Just like you.”

  She nodded. “Do you know much about this place?”

  “Us guards call it Altruism Prison. Sort of like Alcatraz… in the bay.”

  “Wait, are we still in San Francisco? The Bay area?” She realized she had no clue where the prison was even situated.

  “I have no idea. I’m not allowed out, just like you. There are no windows.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “Guards quarters.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Four that I know of. Two day, two night.”

  “Why call it Altruism Prison?”

  “We have this theory that the man who’s built this whole thing thinks he’s doing it for the greater good. He’s taken all these people off the street that have murdered others. Have you-have you murdered someone?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. She felt the guilt rise from the pit of her gut, all the way up through her limbs. “I mean… not directly. No. I didn’t. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  The guard looked up at the camera. “We’ve been too long.” He got up and walked back to the chair under the camera.

  “Wait, what do we do? What’s the plan? You’re the guard, you have to have keys and such to all the rooms. You could be a big help—” She caught a glimmer in his eye. How do I know I can trust him? What if he’s playing double agent right now? She pursed her lips.

  Before he stepped up on the chair, he walked back over to her. “I’m going to unbutton my pants to make it look like I had a reason to turn off the camera, okay?” he asked her.

  She nodded, looking from the camera back to him. He was unbuttoning his pants and zipped them open. “I’m sorry I have to do this—”

  “Do wha—” Before she could finish her sentence, she took a blow to the head. She bit the inside of her cheek and blood sprayed from her mouth as she fell back on the springy, creaky bed. She wasn’t entirely knocked out, and the pain in her jaw surfaced quickly. She reached up to touch the spot, when another blow struck right in between her eyes.

  It knocked her out cold.

  NINE

  “Raine?”

  She heard her voice called from the end of a tunnel. It was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Her eyes fluttered open to the view of the metal ceiling. She heaved a massive sigh. She was hoping that maybe one of these times, she’d wake up back home. After all, she’d gotten here waking up after unconsciousness.

  She was beginning to lose track of time, especially because of the lack of windows or natural light. She couldn’t be sure whether it was night or day outside, there were only the controlled lights inside the warehouse.

  As she lay alone in the cage, recognizing her surroundings once more, thoughts of the small room with the camera flooded back to her.

  He was forced to play that role. Were the other guards forced as well?

  She didn’t know how to feel or what to do with her emotions. Her head pounded. Was that guard on this so-called Warden’s side, or not? If not, why did he knock her out? Why did he leave her back in the cage?

  She sat up and leaned on the wall that was closest to Arie’s cage.

  She thought she’d heard somebody calling her name again, though weaker this time. Arie. It was Arie. “Hey… “ she breathed. Her voice was hoarse, exhausted.

  “What happened, did they hurt you?”

  “Mm… “ She didn’t even the energy to respond.

  She wanted to blurt out everything she’d learned during her time with the guard, but the memory of the camera came back. Were there cameras watching them right now? There had to be. There were probably cameras in every cage, down every row. Somebody, the Warden, was watching their every move. The Warden knew that Arie and Raine were put in the same cage together. He must have sent the guard after them. He must have expected the guard to punish her.

  The thought was chilling. She wouldn’t be able to tell Arie anything that had happened. At least not right away. “Are you okay? When I was taken away… you, you had been hit and thrown into your cage.” She formulated each word carefully, as she stretched her jaw back and forth, trying to coax it back to working for her. After that blow to the jaw, everything felt bruised. The blood in her mouth still gave off a copper taste.

  “I’m okay. I’m always okay. I get knocked around a lot.”

  Despite the situation, there was a boyish charm in his words. He was the type of guy that gave authority a run for their money. And he paid for it. But it was obvious he knew it, and didn’t quit. “Tell me about your life outside of here. What do you do?” He asked.

  The question startled her. “I’m a psychologist.”

  “Damn!”

  That made her laugh. “What? After I graduated college, me and two guys I graduated with opened a co-op office where I do clinical therapy.”

  “So you’re the real deal then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You deal with monsters all day?”

  It was true. She’d dedicated her life to studying the human mind, and the human mind was a terrifying place to be. Not just that of others, but to study and see what the potentialities of he
r own thoughts were as well. “I think it has to do with a lot of factors. Humans aren’t all innately bad. There’s a lot of good. A lot of just amazing emotions and sensations.”

  There was a silence between them and she heard a fan turn on in the distance. There were always ambient sounds in the warehouse: vents, mechanical clanging, and alarms. It was never completely silent. For this she was grateful. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to deal with the silence, with only her screaming thoughts to keep her company. Of course right now she had Arie, and he was better company than any. “What do you do?” she asked. She reached up and massaged her tender jaw.

  “I work with animals. I was studying to be a vet tech, but dropped out. Animals are much better than people.”

  “So if you dropped out, what’d you end up doing?”

  “Well, I run a shelter in Palo Alto.”

  “A shelter?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s a no-kill shelter. People always ask that, but I don’t understand how shelters like that can still exist anymore. I could never do or endorse that.”

  “So you don’t kill animals, but… you kill people?” Her sentence was staggered. Even though she was almost confident that nobody locked in one of these cages was a murderer, especially after her talk with the nice guard, she still had to ask. She bit her bottom lip as she leaned closer to his wall.

  “I’ve killed someone—”

  She inhaled.

  “-just as much as you’ve killed someone.”

  Guilt ripped at her insides. What a stupid question to ask. “So you just take care of them?”

  “Yeah. I just go around and get dogs and cats off the street mostly. Find their homes if they already have one. Find them homes if they don’t. Feed them and give them a place to sleep.”

  “That’s admirable.” She put her hand up against the wall of her cage. Even though there was concrete between them, the divider was thin enough to hear through, and since the doors of the cages were bars, their voices carried.

  Raine was careful to keep her voice low so she didn’t disturb others. “I have a dog. She’s my best friend. I miss her. It’s just us two at my place. I hope somebody is able to feed her.” She felt a tinge of sadness. “I have no idea how long I’ve been here.”

  Arie sighed loudly on the other side of the wall. “What’s her name?”

  “Viona. She’s a mutt. You know, one of those scary looking protective dogs that people are afraid of when you walk by them. But she’s a scaredy cat. She’d cuddle with a robber.”

  “You’ve got one waiting back at home. And you’re her whole world. I’ve got thirty.”

  That sentence gripped her. “I’m sorry, Arie,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure he heard her. “Sitting in here, I’ve been thinking about maybe some of the things in my life that I’ve done… that might have led me here.”

  “Don’t do that. You’ll drive yourself insane. And you know about insane.”

  Man, wait until I tell him about the Warden, she thought, remembering her conversation with the nice guard. “No. I do think I’ve, in a way, self prophesied myself into this exact point of my life.”

  “Okay. We’ve got time. Let’s hear it.”

  “Well I’m thinking back to my first semester of college.” She hesitated briefly and then recounted that moment in her life that changed her mode of thinking for all the years after.

  Eight Years Ago

  Raine clutched her red Solo cup, her oversized sweater covering half her hands. She sat on the lumpy couch, watching some fresh-faced guys tossing a ping-pong ball across the dinner

  table, engaged in an avid game of beer pong.

  “Hey, hellooo. Earth to Raine.”

  She snapped out of it and looked over at her date, her roommate Maggie. “What did you say?”

  “You into one of them or something?” she asked.

  “Ha! No, I was just spacing out. I’m not really into parties all that much. You know I just came to make sure your ass doesn’t do something you’ll regret.”

  “Aw, if I don’t do something I regret, then it’s no fun.” They both laughed.

  “You want another drink?” she asked Maggie, her blonde-haired, blue-eyed roommate from Portland who made friends so easily. Raine had met her the day she moved into their closet-sized dorm room. She and her parents had been building a bed loft when Maggie waltzed in with her rolling suitcase. She hadn’t brought her parents. She’d already claimed her independence. The reason Raine’s parents had come with her was that she had been their first child to go off to college, and it was halfway across the county.

  She filled Maggie’s red cup with another ladle of boozy punch. She added some to her own cup, but only filled it halfway. Even though it was her first semester of college, and she wasn’t of drinking age, she thought a little bit couldn’t hurt. She realized her mistake when the room started spinning, and her movements were slower than her brain. She wouldn’t let it go any further since she had class in the morning.

  When she walked back into the family room, she held the two cups between the fingers of one hand, and fanned her face with the other, to rid herself of the smoky fog in the air. She was careful not to spill.

  As Raine plopped herself down on the couch, Maggie inhaled through a metal mouthpiece attached to a tube, a device that looked like some kind of urn from Morocco. When she was finished, she shoved the mouthpiece into Raine’s face.

  “Naw, I’m okay.” She passed it to the guy sitting in a lawn chair on her other side.

  “C’mon. It’s just a hookah. It’s not weed or anything.” Maggie laughed, and looked around the circle at the group for approval.

  “Yeah, that’s the OTHER room,” one of the guys joked.

  “I know.” She shrugged and then laughed into her cup as she took another sip.

  The guy in the lawn chair blew smoke in her direction as he shoved the hose and mouthpiece back at her.

  What’s it matter? It’s only one time. She looked up at Maggie, and then took the mouthpiece from the guy. She raised it to her lips, and inhaled the blueberry-flavored tobacco. At the top of her drag, a cough escaped her lips, and she exhaled the smoke out into the room. She looked up, but it seemed like nobody was watching her. She passed the mouthpiece to her left again and nestled back in her chair.

  It wasn’t long after she was whispering in Maggie’s ear that she wanted to go back to the dorms. She was ready to go home.

  “Let me drive you!” Maggie shouted over the loud music that played through a built-in stereo system in the house.

  “Naw, it’s okay. It’s not that far. I love walking. Anyway, it’s a nice night out. I don’t want to make you leave the party.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah! I’ll be fine.”

  “Then text me when you get back home, okay?” Maggie asked, squeezing Raine’s arm.

  “Okay, okay!” she laughed, and wrapped her arms around Maggie for a hug. “Don’t stay out too late. You know we have Communications at eight tomorrow morning. I’m not going to take notes,” she joked.

  “Fine, be that way!” Maggie hugged her back, and then she twirled around and went back into the smoke, joining a few other laughing girls that Raine had never met. Maggie had such a way of making friends quickly. It’s like she didn’t care who the person was or what background they were from, she could always find something in common with them. Raine vowed to come out of her shell a little more, and learn how Maggie managed to be so outgoing. She could learn a thing or two from her.

  She closed the front door behind her and took off down the steps of the townhouse, passing a couple making out on the stairs. She hoped her oversized sweater was enough to keep her warm in the brisk, San Franciscan fall night, but the wind was biting and it cut straight through her black leggings. She slung her crossbody purse diagonally across h
er chest, securing her phone in the front pocket of the bag. As she took off down the road, she thought about how proud she was that she had enough self-control to leave a party early. She would get back to the dorm and get a head start on sleeping, so she could be awake and feel good in the morning for class.

  She focused on the connecting pools of light from the streetlights. She turned out of the neighborhood and crossed the street onto the campus. The party house was in the neighborhood right outside campus, so there was no need for her to hop on public transportation to get back to the dorm.

  As she walked, Raine saw a student on his bike zoom past her, and a group of giggling girls across the street turned the corner and out of sight. She continued walking straight.

  She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked up, passing a black car parked against the curb to her right side. As she walked by, she heard the door click. She looked around to see what buildings were nearby, wondering why somebody would be there on a Sunday night, but she kept her head down and minded her own business. She reached up and rubbed at her eyes. They were beginning to itch with tiredness, and once again she was happy that she’d decided to leave the party when she did. She looked up from the sidewalk again to gauge the distance from where she was to the crosswalk, and sensed a presence behind her.

  A looming shadow covered her.

  She looked over her shoulder, but it was too late.

  Somebody very strong wrapped their arms around her and jerked her feet out from underneath her. She yelped out into the night air and threw her elbow back, hitting something hard. Shock waves from her funny bone prickled down her arm. She must have hit a belt buckle. She tried to turn her head to see the face of the person who was groping her, but the man shoved her down by the back of her neck. Her chin was forcefully tucked into her chest, choking her, and making it harder for her to breathe. As she gasped for air and clawed behind her miserably, the man dragged her, which at one hundred and ten pounds and petite frame, wasn’t hard to do. He dragged her towards the black car she passed moments before.

  Raine thrashed around, but it was no use. It was almost too easy for the man to get her to the car. He had reached the vehicle and was fumbling with the handle of the door when Raine heard a shout coming from the other side of the crosswalk.